NFTs land in the wallets of $TRUMP meme coin whales following gala dinner

One NFT sold for 99.9 solana, or over $16,000 at current prices.

6/3/25 2:47PM

Donald Trump’s meme coin venture has entered the NFT scene, a familiar territory for the sitting US President.

Holders of the trump meme coin, as well as those who attended Trump’s gala dinner in May for his meme coin whales, were airdropped NFTs on the solana blockchain, according to a Tuesday announcement by the meme coin project’s X account.

Addresses, including 12f1o and 2PdmU, received NFTs from three different collections — Diamond Hands, Gold Gala Dinner, and Power to the Holders — if they met each of the criteria outlined by the meme coin project.

“1. If you successfully registered for the dinner, 2. were top 220 on the leaderboard, 3. or held strong through the dinner (Diamond Hands), check your wallet,” the post said. If an address met one element of the criteria, they’d receive only the corresponding digital collectible.

The Diamond Hands NFT collection, which has a total supply of 118 NFTs, had a single transfer sale in the last 24 hours, but was the most expensive purchase of its cohort at 99.9 solana, worth more than $16,000, data from NFT marketplace Magic Eden shows.

With a total supply of 219 NFTs, the Gold Gala Dinner collection had four sales within the period and had an average sale of nearly 42.5 solana, representing about $6,900.

Power to the Holders, the cheapest among the group with the largest supply of 1,049 NFTs, has had the most amount of transfers, standing at 17 sales generating over $21,000 in total trading volume in the last 24 hours.

Magic Eden also said Tuesday afternoon that it’s partnering with the meme coin’s team to launch a Trump-branded crypto wallet.

The newly released NFT collections continue a years-long history of Trump rolling out digital collectibles and incentivizing dinners to buyers. The president last dropped an NFT collection in August 2024, where buyers who acquired multiples could get rewards like an invite to a gala dinner with Trump.

In December 2023, Trump released a different collection on the polygon blockchain titled the “Mugshot Edition.” Again, some of those who purchased the digital items received — you guessed it — an invitation for a dinner.

DLNews reported in February that Trump generated between $7.3 million and $8.2 million from his NFT collections, citing his financial disclosures from 2023 and 2024. The first time Trump promoted NFT cards using his image was in 2022, which sold out in a day for about $4.4 million, Forbes reported.

NFTs reached a fever pitch in 2021 after digital artist Beeple sold an NFT piece to art auction house Christie’s for $69 million. The hype cycle included celebrities donning NFT profile pictures and public companies rolling on NFT campaigns. The NFT mania has largely faded, with former giants like Yuga Labs selling CryptoPunks to a nonprofit.

The $TRUMP meme coin has increased roughly 3% in value in the last 24 hours, but has dropped 10% in the past seven days to trade hands at $11.44 as of writing.

Sage D. Young6/16/26

Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/16/26

Bitcoin is “caught between flow deterioration and macro relief”

Sage D. Young6/15/26

Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Ethereum has increased more than 9% to trade above $1,800, amid BitMine Immersion Technologies acquiring $139.2 million worth of ethereum.
XRP and solana have rebounded from multiyear lows, each rising roughly 10%.
HYPE has bounced up 12%.
Dog-based memecoins dogecoin and shiba inu have chased gains of more than 4%.

“Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets,” Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were “very oversold” following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. “Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.”

“Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop that’s stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/15/26

Bitcoin hits highest level in 2 weeks following news of Iran deal

Bitcoin crossed $66,500 Monday morning as the broad crypto market welcomed the return of a risk-on mood.